Aug 19, 2008
My father just forwarded me an email he received which happened to contain the word "SEO". To be honest, I'm impressed he actually remembered that's what I do, I'm pretty sure the concept goes over most people's heads.The email was promoting a New Zealand SEO course (www.seocourse.co.nz), apparently the first of it's kind in NZ.
I thought I'd check out the SEO course and see if it's any good.
So, I got as far as the homepage and then got a bit frightened off by the design. It's one of those typical hard-sell one-page websites with everthing highlighted in yellow. Now, this isn't to say the course isn't any good, but the page looks like thousands of other one-page sales websites, and screams of a 'make money online' template. Not a great first impression, but no doubt this page format is very effective at what it does.
SEO Course SEO
So putting that to one side, I read the content, and it all seems reasonable enough. I thought I'd have a quick look at their own SEO.- No pages indexed in Google (and therefore not ranking at all).
- Meta description is "Join the first online SEO course in Australia".
- No H1 heading
- Dodgy HML markup, created by $99 web editor software
The course is only $7 per month, and if I was to be doing a fair and honest review of this service, I should really sign up and give them a fair run before making comment.
But given the above, I'm pretty sure the Australians are just taking the piss. Attention to detail is one of the most important elements of SEO, and the blatent copy-paste of www.seocourse.com.au's meta description has me doubting the quality of this offering.
I'd also say it's not unreasonable to expect a website that provides SEO services to at least have basic SEO in place, and be indexed by Google. How else are we to judge the quality of this offering, short of signing up?
Harvey.
7 Comments
Yeah I just got spammed with an email regarding the course. I went directly to the site and had a read through it.
It really does look like a dodgy, hard sell site! And there is no contact details for the business owner, or office location. Which makes me even more suss.
It's a shame because I run a mortgage broking business in W.A. (Oz) and I am very interested in the concept of SEO. We are in the middle of tendering for our new website (current one is very ordinary). It's frustrating because you hear so much conflicting information regarding SEO.
Well back to the drawing board!!!
Hi,
I got the same email, doing some research as I always do.
The site was first registered 6/08/08
Does not have a google page rank.
Page does not rank anywhere important on google. In this time he should have some google ranking
Looked up the details of this person, he leave in Tura beach, is a hobby scuba diver and leave with his partner no kids.
Looks doggie to me, I have done many courses, but why would I take advice from someone who is not even ranking himself or even can quote other sites he has helped rank high.
I own 5 website all ranking in the top 3 positions of google.
Regards
Alem
Hi rory,
I know how you feel.
From what I have learned is, get good pages built that are easy to read by google. A Flash site = No cash Site, in my terms.
A site that is easy to use by your clients.
Try focussing only one key work per page and have a maximuim of 5 key words in your meta tages.
Get heaps of good one way links into your site. There are heaps of free diretories, I would submit to all of them as well.
Then keep managing your site daily to see you rank.
One of my businesses now earns 25K per month in sales from just google. With no cost to be there I make great profit from google.
Yellow pages wants $25K PA for an ad that may generate the same sort of sales, and if the ad is wrong, I cannot change it for one year.
If you have a .com.au site, you need to make sure it is hosted in Australia.
You pages should load in less than 2 seconds on Broadband.
Use key words in your page title.
Good luck,
Regards
Alem
Back to the post, I just took a look, and wish you had said how many more business he would sign up, 39 More Businesses, but looking again, that hasn't changed since August 08, probably before you found it Harvey.
Congrats your father remembering you were an seo, my friends refer to it as, "that thing you do with websites" and even I have started referring to my skills as "making websites findable in search engines" it's just easier for people to grasp.
Not a bad idea an seo course, but I would certainly charge more than $7 a month for it.
Regards Lynny Brown (nee Bishop)
I actually read up on one of these and having so much temptation went for the SEOCertification.org move. The certified SEO course that gives you accreditation according to themselves. It was a rollercoaster ride for myself let alone telling team about getting certified. Its not the right thing to say that there is certification in the SEO industry. These courses should be taken with a pinch of salt and you should also consider the SES exhibitions.
The site looks like an affiliate sales page selling some crappy ebooks in it. They are now indexed in google and got 1 backlink, thanks to you...lol